This blog used to be called EDL Extra. I was a supporter (neither a member nor a leader) of the EDL until 2012. This blog has retained the old web address.****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Thursday, 6 July 2017

Jeremy Corbyn vs. the British Army

Corbyn is not a pacifist.

The
leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has yet again
focused on the claims that SAS forceskilled
Afghan civilians. There are also claims that these soldiers attempted
to cover-up
the
evidence against them. Corbyn believes that these accusations should
be investigated by an independent inquiry.

Quotes
have appeared - from military police and defence sources - which show
that there is “strong evidence” that SAS military personnel
killed captured civilians suspected of being Taliban insurgents.

These
claimed emerged in Operation Northmoor, which was a Royal Military
Police investigation. Despite all that, the Ministry of Defence has
said that the RMP found no evidence of criminal behaviour.

***************

There's
no doubt about it. Soldiers who abuse their position or break the
rules should be disciplined. That's certainly the case if they kill
civilians. Nonetheless, it all depends on whether or not such people
are indeed civilians. And even if they are civilians, it also depends
on whether or not they're collaborating with the enemy. Still, even
if they are collaborating, that, in itself, doesn't mean that it's
lawful to kill them. It all depends on very many variables.

So
why is Jeremy Corbyn referring to this case? He's doing so –
obviously - for political reasons. It should also be noted here that
in the past Corbyn has called for similar
inquiries
in the cases of Orgreave, British army actions (interestingly enough)
in Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, etc.

Corbyn is not a pacifist.

Of
course when it comes to what Corbyn
really thinks and believes about
these matters and the British army,we now
face the philosophical problem of “other minds”. Nonetheless, we
can take a semi- or quasi-behaviourist position on Corbyn's mind.
That is, we can judge him by his words and deeds instead. In any
case, we could never
prove
that Corbyn “really believes” p;
just as other people could never disprove
that he really
believesp.

However,
as an international socialist, Corbyn has always been against the
British army. If you trawl through his public pronouncements and
writings, you'll find much anti-British army (as well as anti-police)
rhetoric. He saw the army as being “part of the capitalist state”
(not his own words). Of course, as an MP, he's had to tone his views
down. When he became Labour leader, he toned them down some more. And
during the election, he was even more prudent and circumspect.

Nonetheless,
even when speaking in Parliament, Corbyn said that British taxpayers
should be able to choose whether or not they pay taxes which fund
the British army. According
to the Telegraph:

“During
a House of Commons debate in 1999, the Islington North MP proposed
letting people opt out of giving tax revenue to the Army.

“'What
policy is adopted by his Department in respect of taxpayers who do
not wish to pay certain elements of taxation on grounds of
conscience,' he asked Treasury ministers on June 24.

“Mr
Corby continued: 'British taxpayers have a right of conscience not to
participate in the armed forces in time of conscription and should
have a similar right in time of peace to ensure that part of their
tax goes to peace, not war.'..”

(I
wonder
if Corbyn has the same views about tax-payer choice when it comes to
paying taxes which go towards universities, the NHS, public housing,
the roads, railways, etc.)

Phil
Shiner,
the
disgraced lawyer and self-described “committed socialist”, is
also very good example of a socialist who attempted to take
large-scale action against the British army.

"The
campaigning human rights lawyer Phil Shiner has been struck off as a
solicitor after he was found guilty of multiple professional
misconduct charges, including dishonesty and lack of integrity...

"The
tribunal found Shiner guilty of 22 misconduct charges. They were
proved to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt...

"Shiner
claimed UK soldiers had captured, tortured and murdered innocent
Iraqi civilians after the Battle of Danny Boy near Amara in 2004...

"The
tribunal was told the men’s purported witness accounts were
fictitious and PIL stood to benefit from damages cases linked to the
claim.

"Shiner
had admitted eight allegations of acting without integrity, including
that he made 'unsolicited direct approaches' to potential clients...

Finally,
the Guardian
quotes the Secretary of State for DefenceMichael
Fallonthus:

"'Justice
has finally been served after we took the unprecedented step of
submitting evidence on his abuse of our legal system. Phil Shiner
made soldiers’ lives a misery by pursuing false claims of torture
and murder – now he should apologise. We will study any
implications for outstanding legal claims closely.'”

Jeremy
Corbyn has taken Trotskyist and communist “entryism” into the
Labour Party to the next level. Thus he has always been very careful
with his words, if not equally careful with his deeds and actions.
(That's despite the image that he's a “very principled MP”.)

Strictly
speaking, however, Jeremy Corbyn can't be an entryist because he's
always worked through official channels. For one, he was voted in as
an Member of Parliament way back in
1983.
And since then he's worked within the confines of the Labour Party
and the Parliamentary system. It can therefore be said that it's
revolutionary socialist
ideas -
rather that explicit revolutionary socialists themselves - that are
now firmly entrenched in the Labour Party.

Having
said that, Corbyn's views and actions are often staunchly against
what other socialists call “capitalist democracy”. Thus it's
quite clear that one can work within a system which one ultimately
wants to destroy. This happened with both the National Socialists and
Hamas in 1933 and 2006
respectively.
The Nazis, after their election, brought about a one-party state led
by a fuhrer.
Hamas, similarly, staged what has widely been called “acoup”
in 2007
which obliterated all opposition.

In
the case of Corbyn, we'd also need to say why
- or if
- he wants to destroy our parliamentary system and exactly what he
takes that system to be.

Corbyn
as a Gramscian

Corbyn is not a pacifist.

Trotskyists
and communists have attempted to infiltrate the Labour Party since
the 1920s. In the 1980s, such “entryism”
was rife. For example, there was the Labour
vs. Militant
war
which lasted - on and off - for 17 years (between 1975 and 1992).
There was also many Labour leadership battles with rogue Labour
councillors and MPs.

However,
these Trotskyists and communists never achieved as much political
power as they'd hoped to. As Antonio Gramsci
suggested, they had already taken over many “institutions”.
Nonetheless, they haven't taken over one vital institution:
the House of Commons.
Indeed they hadn't even created a Labour Leader... until Jeremy
Corbyn. And what better Gramscian institution is there than a
political party which has millions of supporters?

Corbyn
must have ideas which are very similar to those expressed by the
revolutionary Leninist, Richard Seymour
(who's written for the Guardian,
Al
Jazeera,the
New
Statesman and
the
London Review of Books).
Seymour (an admirer of Gramsci) has now given up on the Socialist
Workers Party (which he left in 2013) - and revolutionary socialism
generally (in the sense of believing in a violent revolution) - and
opted for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party instead.

Like
Corbyn, Seymour is very angry that the Left hasn't, as yet, achieved
total
power.He
writes:

“[W]hy,
in more than five years of turmoil for the global capitalist system,
has the left made such a practically negligible impact?”

Moreover,

“By
the time oppositional forces work out an analysis of what is
happening, figure out some tactics and get their people in motion,
the terrain has already been occupied by those in power.”

That's
precisely why Richard Seymour now supports Jeremy Corbyn's Labour
Party. He's sick of what he calls Leftist “groupuscules” and
more-Left-than-thou
peacockery.
He, like Corbyn, wants state
power.
That's why Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. And that's also
why he's only just fought an election campaign.

The
(other) Gramsci institutions are no longer enough. The Left wants
total
power.

********************

Corbyn is not a pacifist.

Corbyn's
claims about SAS soldiers should be seen within the Marxist light
underlined above. We should doubt that he cares that much about
injustice or the killing of innocent civilians. Remember, this man
supported the IRA and still supports Hamas and Hezbollah. He has had
good words to say about Trotsky, Che Guevara, the Soviet Union, Fidel
Castro and Hugo Chavez. All these groups, people and states were
large-scale killers. They were also oppressors.

So,
to repeat. Corbyn doesn't care about the killing of innocent
civilians. He cares about having a go at the British army because he
still sees it (to quote other radical socialists) as “an arm of the
British capitalist state”.